By Jim Testa
The Reverb Motherfuckers play it, record labels avoid it,
fanzines love it, the Lismar Lounge books it, and Mykel Board
says he named it. What're we talking about?
We're talking scum.
Scum Rock. Catchy little moniker, ain't it? Of course,
like most labels, nobody's really sure what it means. The term's
been floating around for a while, although it really started to
catch on when Mykel Board profiled the New York "Scum Rock"
scene last summer in "Downtown" magazine.
You could define it geographically: Scum Rock bands play in
the Bermuda Triangle of Manhattan clubland bordered by the
Pyramid Club to the east, Downtown Beirut II on Houston Street to
the south, and venerable CBGB to the west. The fact that the
Bowery is as close as any of these bands ever get to midtown
should tell you something right away.
All of these clubs - and let's not forget the Lismar Lounge,
Nightingale's Bar, or little unmarked holes-in-the-wall like
Chameleon, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut or ABC No Rio while we're at it
- live up to most people's expectations of scumminess. The bands
that play these places by and large can't get gigs anywhere else,
and most of them don't want to. It's not that Scum bands don't
take their music seriously; just that, more often than not, they
don't take themselves very seriously at all. Like the Reverb
Motherfuckers, who take off their clothes and cover themselves
with bar-b-q sauce, or Porno Dracula, who do a credible Iggy Goes
Las Vegas thing. We are not talking careerism, here, that's for
sure.
Scum Rock bands don't have any set sound, unless "LOUD"
qualifies as a genre unto itself these days. Lots of these bands
stoke the flames of the 70's revival (cf. Sub-Pop, Seattle,
Raging Slab, and Das Damen for more on that). Freaks, whose
day-glo orange presskits and comic-book caricature flyers
suggest a trippy, Roger Corman Acid Rock thing, tend to flounder
once John Fay starts cranking out the 15th or 16th grungey Led-en
solo of their set, but they have their moments. The Ex-Lovers
(formerly Traci Lord's Ex-Lovers) don't even look scummy, and
their sound is as sweet as chocolate syrup mixed with seltzer.
This band makes a yummy egg cream kind of sound . Chris Parrish
of Holy Crow looks (and sounds) like Joan Jett and her band has
this great Ramones Go To Hell grunge-punk kick, while the runty
guys in Hammerbrain, with their spikey hair and tattoos, look
like they're gonna gob on ya while they're spewing out their
angry, fiery punktoons.
"At this point," says Mykel Board, the dean of Scum Rock
critics, "Scum Rock has to be any band that won't deny it." See,
most of these combos - including the ones I just mentioned - hate
being called Scum Rock.
The biggest problem is that in Board's original Scum
article, he intimated that most scum bands don't play their
instruments very well or sing in tune or write good songs, a
notion that the bulk of the scum scene denies vehemently.
"I'm too young to remember, but it seems to me that
everything they used to say about Punk, they're saying now about
Scum," says Jon Ment, a sometime-college student, fanzine editor,
as well as bassist/singer for the band Slugfest. "I agree that
there is a scum scene and I wouldn't deny we're a Scum Rock band,
but I don't agree with the stuff Mykel Board wrote about scum
bands not being very talented."
Frankly, I think Ment is exactly right. Scum bands may be
casual about re-tuning between every song, but they are far from
untalented - and it's exactly the same sort of reverse snobbism
that plagued the Punk scene of the late '70's. In defense of
punk rock, I need only point out that the biggest selling album
of 1976 (the year in which Never Mind The Bollocks...Here's The
Sex Pistols was released) was Frampton Comes Alive!, a
masterpiece of well-tuned guitar playing and in-key vocals. And
I don't really have to point out which record is still listened
to 13 years later, do I?
Some of the other cool bands making the scum scene include
the Unsane (not to be confused with the 8 or 9 other bands called
The Unsane going around nowadays, including a really sucky one on
New Renaissance Records). Gerard Cosloy picked the NYC Unsane as
Best New Live Thrash/Fusion Band (or something) in the last
Flipside poll, and he's right. They're real good. Not your
typical 3-piece death thrash combo, these guys are loud and shit,
but tuneful too, and good lookin'. You can tell they're
Thrash/Fusion 'cos they all look so different from one another -
the drummer is a blond hippie type, the lead singer/gtr is a tall
skinny dude in a baseball cap, and the bassist is a skinhead.
(How come if there's a skinhead or a girl in the band, it's
always the bassist?)
Another excellent if scummy band to watch for is The Thing,
fronted by Jesse Ostbaum, who's been kicking around New York
looking for a band to be magnificent in for about 5 years now.
Well, he finally found it. Between shooting off firecrackers and
smoke bombs and screaming his lungs out and waving his long curly
hair at the crowd, Jesse gets to listen to his pal Sal Canzonieri
wail out some immensely thick harmonic guitar. These guys got the
psychokiller melodramatics of the Buttholes, the killer punk-
crunch of White Zombie, and the post-psychedelic drone of the
Velvet Monkeys at their most possessed.
The Thing swears they're not Scum Rock either.
Bands like Pussy Galore, the Buttholes, B.A.L.L. (with
Shimmydisc's Mark Kramer on bass and Velvet Monkey Don Fleming on
guitar), and Sharkey's Machine helped influence and create the
Scum Rock scene - but most of those bands have released albums,
toured, and play nicer clubs. Call them Scum Alumni. GWAR are
Viking Scum. (Any band on Shimmydisc has at least one foot in
the slime, by the way. The label's trademark horseshit guitar
sound and Manny's Garage-caliber production make almost any
Shimmydisc release at least part Scummy.) Ed Gein's Car plays
out with the scum bands an awful lot; they're scum-by-association
(and, as a New York hardcore band that's neither teenaged,
positive, straightedge or on Buy Our Records, they have no real
constituency of their own anyway.)
Last, and probably even least, nothing on Scum Rock would be
complete without some mention to Letch Patrol. If you read
Maximum Rock 'N Roll, you probably already know the name - they
hold the record for most consecutive mentions in a Scene Report.
In fact, self-promotion is what they do best. Lead singer Harris
Pankin (who, more than any other human being, sums up the word
SCUM in everything he does) even turned the Thompkins Square Park
police riot in a Letch Patrol media circus, turning up repeatedly
on the evening news and talk shows in a Letch Patrol t-shirt,
making sure to mention the band in between showing off a nasty
scalp wound (courtesy of some out-of-control NYC cop's
nightstick). Unfortunately, Letch Patrol keeps falling apart at
the seams, losing and finding new members. Without a viable
lineup for 1989's Scum Fest at CBGB, they did the next best thing
- took the stage, made an elaborate show of tuning up for about
15 minutes, and then lip-synched their single.
Letch Patrol really epitomizes what Scum Rock is all about -
making do at the bottom rung of the rock 'n roll ladder, coping
with a dying club scene and an indifferent public, finding ways
to make music and have fun. And if you can throw a few pies into
the face of proper society while you're at it, all the better.]
Scum Rock's Greatest Shit
"On The Rag Compilation"
w/ Hammerbrain, Roadkill, Ex-Lovers
(Urban Rag Records)
Letch Patrol
"Love Is Blind"/"Axe To Grind" 45
Honeymoon Killers
"You Turn Me On" EP
Buy Our Records
The Thing
6 Sick Songs Cassette
Reverb Motherfuckers
"Route 666" lp
Bands Only A Mutha Could Love
Compilation CD
Mutha Records
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845
Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766
realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699
The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X

The views and opinions stated within this web page are those of the
author or authors which wrote them and may not reflect the views and
opinions of the ISP or account user which hosts the web page. The
opinions may or may not be those of the Chairman of The Skeptic Tank.